


I Hear You

by RabbitPie



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: And wrecking things, Gen, Kid Fic, Loki is a pest, Thor is gross, kiddies getting up to mischief, upto and including themselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 11:00:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5331737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RabbitPie/pseuds/RabbitPie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor threw his hands up with exasperation and fell onto the bed. “Okay, I’m just going to sit here on the bed in complete ignorance of what you’re planning!” he shouted at Loki.</p><p>Never let it be said that Thor responsible for <i>all</i> the trouble Frigga’s sons got into.</p><p>Some of that trouble had farther-reaching consequences than the rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Hear You

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to get this one off the harddrive. It's been staring at me. For a while. It may become multi-chaptered or turn into a verse.

Loki raced over the polished gold-wood floors and skidded to a stop outside Thor's bedroom. He knocked, once, and pushed open the door. A rotting stink wafted out to offend his nose. Thor lay back on his bed, oblivious to the smell, apparently trying to throw a ball back between his feet and hands. It hit his stomach and rolled off, bouncing across the floor.

“Loki?” He shifted his head to get a better look at his brother. No longer engaged in their game, his limbs dropped back to the bed with thumps.

“Have you seen the delegation from Jotunheim? Of course you haven't.”

Thor sat up. “From _Jotunheim?_ ”

“Yeah,” Loki answered, and plopped the bag he had been carrying onto the table. He had yet to master the art of pocket dimensions, though he salivated after his mother and father's ability. (Anyone who said it was too girly could take that up with _Odin,_ and end up a newt or something.)

“Then what are doing _standing there_?!” Thor pelted for the door. Loki grabbed his arm. Both winced at the pull, and Thor tumbled a few steps before he stopped. Loki stumbled several paces after him.

“Maybe I'm standing here because we've been barred from the Great Hall?” he demanded, wringing out his arm. Thor was _so_ predisposed towards impulsion and insanity. Loki feared for Asgard.

Thor pouted, only slightly. He gave Loki's bag an appraising look. There were promising items in there: pencils, runestones, and a handful of notes that he reached for.

Loki slapped his hands away, of course. Spoilsport. He was rarely free with his knowledge. Thor threw up his hands and marched back to his bed. “Okay, I'm just going to sit here on the bed in _complete_ ignorance of what you're planning!”

“Good boy,” Loki answered. Thor gnashed his teeth at him.

Loki was waay to much like their father, in Thor's not-so-humble opinion. Frigga, at least, would have explained what she was doing, but Loki enjoyed Thor's bewilderment as he drew a circle in the middle of the floor, and pushed Thor's bed (and Thor) out of the way to make room. It'd serve him right of he uncovered the rotten sandwich under there.

It was a pity that the ball was on the other side of the room: Loki's head made a tempting target.

Loki repeated the same rune several times with consistent taps and strokes of his pencil and Thor squinted at it. “Nnnnnnnnnn? Loki, did you basically just write 'gimme gimme gimme'?'”

Loki glared at him, to show _exactly_ how little Thor's opinion mattered to him. Keeping eye-contact, he wrote 'Shut up, Thor' into the runic circle he'd been creating.

Alarm shot through Thor. “Hey, don't do that!”

Loki huffed. “Don't worry, not even _this_ could make you shut up. But I do need your name here.”

Thor frowned, not quite sure if he should believe his brother. Loki settled his nerves by writing his own name opposite Thor's (though his was unaccompanied by an instruction).

“Done,” Loki said, tossing his pencil at his bag.

“So it's a spy ring?” Thor asked. It was the only thing that made sense. It would enable them to look in on the Great Hall, if it hadn't been protected against such measures. Thor raised his eyebrows. _If_ it hadn't been protected against such measures. Which is most definitely had been.

“I've taken st eps to ensure it will evade Mother and Father's wards,” Loki grumbled, and scuttled back to stand over his own name. “Go on, stand on your spot.”

Thor did so. Perhaps this was why Loki had done it in pencil and not chalk. The thinner lines looked less attractive to Thor, and less powerful, but he couldn't argue that they smudged less. They did look lopsided, though.

“It's exactly how it's supposed to be,” Loki sighed out. The circle itself contained a lens that would focus Thor and Loki's experience on the Great Hall. Loki didn't want to be forced to explain that (and it would take forever, anyway, and Thor wouldn't get it). “Hurry up.”

“And do what?” Thor demanded. He put his arms up to show Loki that they were too far away for their hands to touch. So, the _normal_ thing that people did in rune circle spells was not going to work.

Loki hissed with impatience. “You have to look me in the eye, don't focus on anything else, don't _think_ about anything else, just look at my eyes until you can't see my nose, or my eyebrows, or anything else in my face. You have to stop being _here_.” He waved a hand to encompass the room, and hoped that Thor would be able to quiet his mind enough to do it.

Thor seemed to settle down. He let his arms fall by his sides and looked into Loki's eyes. Loki did the same. He settled himself into breathing, into looking in Thor's eyes and seeing nothing but the blue of his irises and the black of his pupils. He'd done everything he needed to do to get this to work. As a nigh-pure receiving experience, this should not be detectable by even the mistresses of sedir Frigga and Odin.

Thor felt the room, and even his body, fade from his consciousness. He focused on Loki's eyes until even they seemed to melt away, and he blinked to discover himself in the Great Hall. There were many towering Jotnar and the Aesir looked small but ever more refined next to them. He looked about for Loki. He was standing beside him instead of before him as they had in Thor's room.

There was something wrong. Something in this room did not compute, and Thor looked around to determine what – and yet nothing was out of place. Nothing, but the tall, blue shapes of the Jotnar – and they did not seem to be acting suspiciously.

Thor took a step back from them, towards Loki. His heart was beating too quickly and his breaths too short. What _was_ wrong? He knew he trusted Loki to get them out of here, and yet now even his hands had begun to betray him because they were shaking. There was no reason for this _fearful_ confusion. He was not a coward!

He checked the Jotnar again – Jotun magic? But they were doing… nothing. Normal things. Talking? But sedir could be spoken. He didn't know if Jotnar could even do sedir… Loki would know.

Loki's lips were pursed, his face was white, and he was shaking. Thor's mouth dropped open, and he was lost for words. “Loki?” the word came out surprisingly steady.

“You _IDIOT!”_ Loki bellowed, breaking the quiet. “You idiot, why did you talk? Don't you know _anything?_ ”

That wasn't fair. “You explained nothing. What's wrong?”

“Oh it doesn't matter now!” Loki snapped, and slapped his forehead.

Thor pulled Loki's hand away from his head. Loki had a tendency to hurt himself after making mistakes and Thor couldn't help but fear that this was a symbol of self-flagellation rather than the expression of disbelief it would be in most people.

Loki stared back at him blankly, shock entering his eyes. No recrimination? Loki usually reacted poorly to—

“Oh,” Loki said quietly. “Yes. Let's just… touch as well. Yes that is a _wonderful idea Thor!_ ”

Thor let go and stepped back, confusion and fury rippling through him in waves that ran from his ears to his feet. Loki snarled out a curse, and with a sharp gesture they were back in Thor's bedroom.

Thor wanted to sigh in relief, but fear closed his throat. Everything was fine, wasn't it. They were safe – but Loki was staring at the ground, panting. He put a hand on Loki's shaking shoulder.

Loki spluttered incoherently, pausing and gasping for a few moments, and droppedfrom Thor's hand to the ground, scrambling for the pencil marks and rubbing at them with his thumbs. His touches did not remove the marks. Wordlessly, Thor passed him an eraser. He felt as though balancing on the tip of a spire while the winds of emotion tore through the streets below.

It was not something that was usually a part of him. It wasn't something that he did. Thor _swam_ in his emotions, unapologetically.

These were not his emotions.

“ _Loki?”_

Loki stopped rubbing. He'd removed a quarter of the circle in only a few moments. That black head looked up, green-blue eyes meeting Thor's, and without ever opening his mouth he spoke into Thor's head.

“You finally got it.”

Thor wobbled on the spire's tip and his balance failed. The chaos rose to greet him. His chest was grabbed by angerepanicshock and his feet shrunk away before him forcing him to reel back to regain balance, which was lost the moment it was gained and he fell. The bed hit him in a cloying embrace, reaching around his sides but as he pushed further into it – further away from the _world –_ it denied him entry.

Thor's eyes were squeezed shut, and he forced them open.

Loki was like a rock sitting in the middle of the floor with his knees drawn up to his chest. That was his brother, Thor reminded himself. his little brother was scared and alone and _so far away_. These emotions were Loki's as much as they were Thor's.

He opened his mouth to talk but speech did not follow. His vocal chords refused to answer, frozen stiff with fear. Thor's mouth bubbled open and closed. “Loki, Loki--” his mind chattered while his lips did nothing.

“Thor--” Loki's answer.

Thor's knees relaxed, and the bed pushed him away. He lifted a hand to steady himself against the mattress. That was movement. He could _move_. Thor was beside Loki in an instant, wrapping himself around his brother. Loki's body shivered like his own, but more violently.

His body was heaving and panting, and against him Loki was doing the same.

 

They sat there more quite some time, well over an hour, as their bodies gradually stopped shaking and their emotions began to still, enough for them to talk. The mind-talking was strange and too invasive, too strong a reminder of their ordeal, so they tried not to do it.

Loki explained, as well as he could, what had happened. The two of them had never left Thor's room. He had intended to reflect the Great Hall into their experience. He had hoped to do this by reflecting a point between their gazes into the Great Hall. It had been theoretical, an idea that Loki had come up with to fool the wards.

But by keeping eye-contact and removing themselves from the room in spirit, they had somehow placed themselves partly within eachother. At that point, the situation had still been salvageable, but when Thor spoke, he connected their hearing and speech, and when he touched Loki, he connected their sense of touch. Loki could only thank the Norns he hadn't farted or licked him or something.

They walled themselves in for the rest of the day, Loki going over his notes and everything he could think of to help them separate their emotions and thoughts. Thor could do little more than lie on the bed and wonder at how, though his hands were empty, it truly felt like he was touching the notes Loki was pouring over.

It was nighttime, and many turned-away servants later, that Loki slipped out of Thor's room, satisfied that there was a rudimentary barrier between them.

Thor put his pillow over his head and screwed his eyes shut. Loki's notes had been burnt in his fireplace, and the circle wiped from the floor. There was no evidence of the connection they'd made. He didn't want anyone to know. He flinched as he though of Odin's wrath. Their father would be unhappy, and Thor knew he and Loki were too overwrought to be yelled at.

 

They never did tell Odin, or Frigga, or _anyone_ , what transpired that day.

 

Many years of piling distrust later, when Odin ripped Thor's sedir from him and cast him down to Midgard – Thor's mind was torn from Loki's and Loki's consciousness _bled_.


End file.
